


don’t let me go, i don’t know where i am.

by faenova



Category: AR∀GO ロンドン市警特殊犯罪捜査官 | Arago
Genre: Brain Damage, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mental Instability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28843491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faenova/pseuds/faenova
Summary: Seth hasn’t been the same since they rescued him from Lia Fáil.
Relationships: Seth Stringer/Oz Miller
Comments: 3
Kudos: 2





	don’t let me go, i don’t know where i am.

Seth hasn’t been the same since they rescued him from Lia Fáil.

At first, Oz didn't think the way he was acting was concerning. Nobody thought it was. He spent a godawful amount of time in a fae trap, of course he was going to be disoriented. Kind of spacey, not always realizing he’s out of Lia Fáil, generally being confused. His missing hand and ear, rendering him partially deaf on that side, certainly weren’t helping his recovery time.

It’s just taking him a while. Seth can take all the time he needs.

~

Oz has the luxury of waking up slow this morning since he didn’t set an alarm, and Seth wakes up even slower beside him. Oz has enough time to gather up his prosthetics, get his arm on, and start getting his leg on as well by the time Seth sits up and makes it to the edge of the bed.

He sees what Seth is about to do, but doesn’t have the time to react as Seth “grabs” the bedpost with his nonexistent hand and pitches forward onto the floor when he tries to push himself up.

Oz winces “Are you alright?”

Seth blinks, slow, and scrunches up his face for a moment before his eyes flutter back open. “I... forgot.”

“I get it. Feels like the limb is still there, especially when you can still see the aura.” Oz finishes strapping on his prosthetic leg and stands so he can help Seth get up. “Have you tried masking so you can’t see it?”

“I have mmmaybe.” Not entirely a real sentence, but Oz will take it. He holds Seth’s stump in his hands, trying to help Seth by giving him what energy he can.

The aura around Seth’s elbow is a bright magenta, and from there to the tips of his fingers it’s a smooth gradient to orange. His arm cuts off midway between his elbow and wrist, but the aura doesn’t have a single visible flaw. The colors are still there, solid, almost looking real if you don’t pay attention. The transparent fingers flex slowly, jerky and tense. The colors swim in and out of focus for a moment, flickering, but then they go back to normal. “I can’t--” he winces. “I can’t.”

Oz laughs, lighthearted and bright to lift the mood. “No need to stress yourself out. Making a whole limb disappear is hard, I should know.”

Seth smiles up at him, tired, and the colors over his chest turn warm and soft.

~

It won’t be too hard to get a prosthetic for Seth. Oz hopes it will help with his disorientation, having his hand back. Oz talks about scheduling an appointment to get him fitted, but...

“No-- _no_.”

Oz blinks. “No?”

“It’s too good,” Seth gasps. “It’s not real.”

“This is real, Seth.”

“That’s what-- say. You say. You always say that.” Seth chokes, gripping the stump of his wrist so tightly that Oz is worried his nails will break the skin. “It’s... no.”

“It’s real.” Oz reaches out with his aura, a gentle touch, trying to calm him. “I promise--”

“ _No!_ ” The scream is accompanied by a burst of wind, tearing books off the shelf, knocking over a potted plant, and overturning the chair in the corner of the living room. Seth is heaving for breath, looking at nothing, hunched and still clawing at his stump.

Oz keeps his expression even, but he can feel his heart pounding “Why isn’t it real?” he asks calmly.

“It’s not-- it--” Seth growls in frustration. “It’s _good_. Real isn’t-- Lia Fáil is too good.”

Oz takes a cautious step closer. Seth flinches, but doesn’t back away. Another step, and Seth doesn’t react. “A prosthetic is normal. If it were a perfect dream, you would still have your hand. Right?”

“Sometimes.” The panic in his aura is dying down, wavering but no longer erratic.

“You were missing a hand in Lia Fáil?”

“Sometimes,” Seth repeats with the same inflection. “I dreamed... a lot.” His words are slow and uncertain. “I’m still dreaming.”

Oz doesn’t know if trying to convince him this is real will help or not, so he opts for a quiet, “You’re safe,” as he finishes closing the distance between them. “You’re safe with me, okay?”

“Am I?” Seth finally looks up at Oz.

“You are.” Oz offers his hand, his real one. “And we don’t have to go get you fitted if you don’t want to.”

“I want-- I don’t--”

“It can wait.”

Seth makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat.

“I won’t make you go.”

Seth takes in a shaky breath and reaches out for Oz, bumping the back of their hands together, and Oz takes his hand and squeezes it.

“I’m safe,” Seth murmurs.

“You’re safe.”

~

Arago has a stutter, and no one mocks him for it. They tease him sometimes, sure, but nothing actually meant to hurt him. His brain runs too fast for his mouth and he skips words or fumbles his sentences or mixes up syllables. It’s not uncommon for him to get stuck on the start of a word, saying the first sound on a loop until someone else supplies the rest of the word for him and he can move on.

Rio is bilingual, and sometimes remembers words in one language but not the other. She’s taken to slapping Arago’s shoulder repeatedly and yelling in Japanese when she can’t find the words in English, hoping that he can translate what she forgot. It has about a 50/50 success rate, since Arago forgot most of his Japanese after Rio left England, but he’s started getting good at it again because of this.

Coco mumbles, and her words slur together, though she’s gotten better about speaking up and being more confident.

None of them are strangers to speech problems in their group, but it hits different when Seth is the one struggling. He speaks slowly on good days, picking his words carefully with vocabulary on par with how he spoke before Lia Fáil, though sometimes slurred. On bad days, he speaks in fragmented sentences and misremembered words. He can tell he’s speaking differently, but he can’t always tell why.

~

Seth puts a knife through his own shoulder. When Oz gets back to HQ after a mission with Arago, he thinks he’s misheard what Rio said. The absence of the “accidentally” nags at the back of his mind, along with the vibrating, worried shine in her aura. Arago has already moved past Rio to find Seth and heal him. Oz stays put and has to steel himself to ask, “What happened?”

“It... took us a while to get an answer out of him,” Rio says. Her eyes are watery, but she isn’t actually crying-- yet. “He said that he was... trying to get out of Lia Fáil.”

Oz, again, isn’t sure he hears her right. “How, exactly?”

“We’re not-- we think that he meant he was... shocking himself out of the dream.” She sniffs, and wipes at her eyes. “He’s not making a lot of sense right now. You’ll probably have better luck than me talking to him.”

Oz finds Seth in their room, Arago examining his work on Seth’s arm with his gloved hands. “Tell me if anything feels weird, okay?”

Seth gives a noncommittal noise, and that’s apparently enough for Arago to call it a day. He stands, nods at Oz and slips past him without waiting for him to move out of the doorway.

“Hey.” Oz sits down on the bed next to Seth.

Seth startles, snapping his head up to look Oz in the eye. He... doesn’t seem all there. It’s like Seth isn’t sure where he’s supposed to be looking, eyes darting around and seeing right through Oz.

“How are you doing?”

Seth turns away, still not looking at anything in particular, but at least he answers. “I’m fine.”

“Rio said you hurt yourself.”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Dreams stop when...” Seth winces, brings a hand to his forehead. “Dead.”

Oz sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, and can’t bring himself to release it and speak. He wasn’t aiming for his shoulder, then. He must have been aiming for his chest, or his throat, but-- Seth’s gross motor functions have been shaky. That might have been the only thing that saved him.

Seth’s other hand joins the first, and now he’s clutching his head.

Oz finally breathes out. “Are you alright?”

“My head hurts.”

“...I’m sorry.”

“It’s not--” he stops abruptly, hunching over and staying still.

“Seth--?”

“Why is it so fucking hard to _think!_ ” This time his outburst isn’t joined by a sudden gale, but it’s still startling.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. He doesn’t know what else to say. “Can I touch you?”

“Nh.”

Oz slowly, carefully, reaches out for Seth and pulls him closer. He immediately leans into it, burying his face in Oz’s chest.

This is when he realizes, definitively, that Seth isn’t getting better.

~

Oz can’t find any lingering magic that’s addling Seth’s thoughts, but a neurologist finds very physical brain damage.

So. It’s not something he _can_ get better from.

Seth keeps asking why they’re in a hospital.

~

In Seth’s moments of clarity, (days, if they’re lucky,) Oz can banter with him like normal. He still speaks slowly, but can remember a good amount of his literature repertoire to throw out relevant quotes and to string together long and creative insults.

In Seth’s less lucid moments, (days, if they’re unlucky,) he doesn’t remember who Oz is. One night Seth will kiss him, trace his scars with delicate hands, talk with him late into the night after they make love-- and the morning he wakes up and tries to gather his clothes and leave, thinking Oz was a one-night stand from a drunken haze.

~

“My head hurts.” A resigned statement. Seth’s eyes are clear, which means he understands what’s going on-- which means he understands what he doesn’t have right now.

“I know.” Oz pulls him close, presses a soft kiss to his temple and holds him. “I know,” he repeats quietly.


End file.
